I cleared the 5k mark on the 19th actually so I wrote 2.5k words in the space of five days. I have just seen and made that calculation within the last few minutes; I am blown away by that but spending those few days drawing and not writing seems to have done the trick I think in helping me do that as part of that total was description of the building and beginning to explain how a day at the school works. The characters are sitting down to breakfast when I last wrote.

As I said, only part of that total came from the above. The rest was from a scene I had swirling in my head about a certain, possibly important, detail about one of the characters. I don’t want to elaborate too much as I am still figuring it out but it’s safe to say that I am quite excited and provided some insights to my FMC that I hadn’t considered before.

Now that I’ve done my 5k for the month, onto clearing the deficit! How are you doing? Done for the month or still chasing your target? Let me know below.

Just a quick update having realised I haven’t posted any sort of update on here. Been very distracted with actual writing, life and the Draebox challenges. If you’ve read my Twitter feed, you get an idea of what’s been going on.

In terms of story, there isn’t really a lot to tell. The characters have been sorted and are taking in their new surroundings and the garden party that has started the year. Very Hogwarts-esque but that is unavoidable I think. It’s a definer of the trope arguably so all magic school stories will be compared to it. For me and this story, having houses and an opening ceremonial meal just fits. I am thinking of taking it more along a Malory Towers line which had a house system as well if not the meal so it still works. I have also had a few more ideas for different characters which could yet be dropped but that’s the fun of drafting, you can try things out before setting the story permanently.

Going forward, the main goals are to keep writing, read the books I received from Draebox and just keep going. I want to get as much written as possible right now because I know I will be seriously hampered in my ability to write from mid-November to Christmas. I have had to drop my target word count for November to 2,500 as I am not sure how willing to write I will be with how tired life is going to make me. The drop in target has also let me drop my deficit from 16,000 to 3,600 words. Much more manageable.

So today we’re talking about if you should Self Publish or Traditionally Publish that baby you have been working on for months or years. This of course is no easy question to answer, and also very highly personal to each writer. So I am going to discuss my opinion on the matter. And a little forewarning, because of the topic of this post, this is going to be a long one.

Before you can answer this main question, you must answer a few others first. Let’s see what those are.

I know some of you will have been chewing this one over, so let me enlighten you.

In my fictional podcast ‘The Diary of Roxy Collins’, my character Roxy experiencestiny handbag excitement. She buys herself a tiny handbag in the hope that she can only fill it with just the bare essentials in life; phone, lip gloss, tissues & a small purse. Life would be so much easier for all of us if we could manage with a tiny handbag.

For the record, when you are a writer you can kiss goodbye to the dream of possessing a tiny handbag. There are so many things we have to cart about with us.

So, I thought it would be interesting to see what a Writer’s handbag contains. As I am a writer I thought we…